Past Imperfect
by CornishGirl
Summary: (Tag to 11x14, "The Vessel.") Sam can always tell when his brother checks out, losing himself in memory. For all Dean teases Sam about his puppy dog eyes, Dean's eyes—their mother's, Dad had said one night as his eldest lay on a motel bed semi-conscious in the aftermath of a hunt gone bad—are every bit as expressive, if not more so. Now, clearly, memory brings pain.


**_Past Imperfect_**

* * *

 ** _8:45 P.M._**

* * *

Sam sat at the library table with his metaphorical guts hanging out, wreathed across his lap. He'd caught his breath after a brief, shock-punched exhalation; found air to fill his lungs. But he felt hollow and thin and _stretched_.

And somehow grieving.

This. This was not. This was nothing he'd ever expected, out of his brother. Not now. Not these days.

Hell. Not _ever_ , actually, not with their lives. Certainly not for Dean, who'd been so single-mindedly devoted to their father and the mission to the exclusion of all else.

For himself, yes, Sam had wanted it. Found it, or the threadbare edges of it, torn to shreds later. And once, he'd wanted it for Dean, thought he could make it happen. Had _insisted_ , in fact, that it happen for Dean, now that it wasn't possible for himself. But even then, with the apocalypse upon them, even as he teetered on the precipice of his own ending, he couldn't be certain Dean would actually do it. His brother was a damn stubborn son of a bitch. But Dean had promised, in his own fashion, and it had been enough for Sam. Back then, in those moments, as he tried to reconcile himself to a cessation of life—because, really; what else was he to do? Let Lucifer reign?—he'd truly wanted his brother to find a reason other than hunting to carry on.

Because it was easier to take his leave of Dean if Dean's future was _different_. Something other than what he'd shared with Sam for all but a handful of years.

He'd wanted happiness for his brother. He'd wanted _apple pie_ for his brother. He'd wanted his brother safe.

All the things he'd once wanted for himself.

But he could not bear to think of Dean hunting without him. Not anymore. Once, yes. But not at the End of Days. So, he intentionally manipulated a promise that would keep Dean whole, give him a chance at normalcy, to turn him from the life he'd known with his baby brother. Because Sam very selfishly wanted no one to take his place.

But—this. Something Sam had surrendered, with Amelia, three years prior. Something he believed Dean had surrendered well before that.

Dean had fallen hard for Cassie, and Sam got that. He'd fallen for Jess in the same way. Jess was his first woman, despite Dean's attempts at targeting "training partner" women for his virginal baby brother; and while Sam was absolutely certain Cassie had not been Dean's first—hell, probably Dean had enthusiastically lost it at, oh, maybe the age of six—she'd been the first woman Dean had opened himself up to when he was young and raw and emotionally wounded, lacking a brother who'd cut and run.

Looking, maybe hoping, for what their father had found in their mother, before she was butchered.

Back then, when Sam realized Dean had once loved Cassie, when he'd gotten a grudging confirmation from his brother, he was inexperienced enough to find it amusing that his stupidly attractive, idolized macho older brother with the killer eyes and grin and confidence up the wazoo had been _dumped_.

Now, though. Well. He'd grown up.

He knew Dean had never loved Lisa. He knew that in some indefinable way Dean was more in love with _Ben_ , with the concept of having a son, than he was with Lisa.

But this . . . _this_ was a revelation. They were now ten years beyond Cassie, five years beyond Lisa. Well past the happily-ever-after expiration date for Dean Winchester. Or so Sam believed.

And yet.

The pain Sam felt wasn't jealousy. Wasn't selfishness. It was a sincere and _un_ selfish wish for _what might have been_.

That never could have been.

He drew in a breath, blew it back out between pursed lips.

Wondered: _Why is it that such revelations begin in utterly mundane moments?_

Because it _had_ been a mundane moment _._ And then, mellowed by whiskey, prompted by nostalgia over their father, the contentedness of a full stomach, Dean made the admission that shocked Sam to his core. That now ached within his breast. Because just as Dean could not have the bruised but happier world shaped by the djinn in that warehouse, no matter how much he wished to stay in that nonexistent world, neither could he ever have had _this_.

Mundane moments. Nothing more than dinner.

* * *

 ** _Three hours prior_**

* * *

Dean had eaten with his usual gusto, chowing down on grilled spare ribs drenched in barbecue sauce, garlic-laced mashed potatoes, and a carefully-erected cairn of fruit chunks—yellow pineapple, turgid pink watermelon, pale green honey-dew—that had brought Sam to stunned silence, and then amused appreciation when his brother explained he'd done it for him. Because, you know, Sam might actually _expire_ if he missed out on a layer intrinsic to the food pyramid.

Because fruit, when not baked into a pie, did not count for Dean. Sam doubted Dean would even eat his own fruit cairn, but at least he'd erected one on his plate, too. Progress. Sort of.

Bread, however, was missing from Dean's menu. Sam said nothing of it; probably Dean believed there were only two kinds of bread: plastic-wrapped sliced white sandwich loaves of no redeeming nutritional value, and sesame-seeded burger buns. And since dinner did not consist of sandwiches or burgers, with or without cheese, bread was therefore not factored into the equation.

Sam blopped raspberry vinaigrette onto his salad. His brother had not bothered to serve himself leafy greens, since he was of the opinion the only place such things belonged was growing in a front yard, or presented as a single limp, brown-edged leaf of lettuce draped across his burger.

"Been studying the food pyramid?" Sam asked as he excavated among his salad so as to share the wealth of dressing to all corners and layers of salad strata.

He wanted to say more, to say something about how _domesticated_ it felt that Dean enjoyed cooking so much, now that they had a permanent home—and kitchen—in the bunker. And how much he _enjoyed_ that Dean did. But he knew better. So long as he followed the 'guy code' and offered no compliments beyond, perhaps, a resounding belch, Dean would be happy. If Sam praised his cooking, or commented on how nice it was to have a home-cooked meal, Dean would retreat and retrench, wanting to re-establish that testosterone clogged his arteries far more than fat—or even blood—did.

So Sam said nothing. He ate salad, fruit, mashed potatoes, and resorted to fingers to suspend and gnaw from ribs every last fiber of meat off the bones. Then, in what he hoped was an appropriately _masculine_ approach, he sucked residual sauce off his fingers. Noisily. As a man might.

Dean's eyes were bright. "Okay?"

Sam hummed enthusiastic approval. " _Better_ than okay." Because if Dean asked, sideways or however, Sam was free to express appreciation.

It appeared to be enough. "There's pie," Dean said. "You know—for dessert."

Sam wanted to laugh at the clarification, but didn't. Because with his brother, pie on its own might constitute breakfast, or an entire banquet in and of itself. If Dean was relegating it to the traditional role of _dessert_ , it meant his brother truly was relaxed.

Not enough of that going around, with Amara in the mix.

With effort, Sam kept it from his face. He schooled his features into nothing more than quiet appreciation of the meal, eyes on his plate rather than meeting Dean's. Because if he looked at his brother, the jig was up. Dean could read him like a book.

Even a book in Braille.

"Apple," Dean said. " _Dutch_ Apple, with all the crumbs."

Sam smiled; now he could meet those eyes. "And whiskey as a side."

"In it, on it, next to it," Dean agreed by rote, then released a half-muffled belch. "Otherwise, it's salt without pepper, or—"

"—salt without lighter fluid," Sam finished, grinning; yeah, he'd heard that from their father back when he was a kid.

And that put a sudden hitch in his inhalation.

"What?" Dean asked sharply.

Sam raised his eyes and blinked at him. "What?"

"I asked you first."

Sam blundered through several brief aborted pre-verbals, expressions, and an interrogatory twitching of his shoulders. " _What_ what?"

"You were thinking about something."

"I think about a _lot_ , Dean. That's what brains do. At least— _my_ brain does. God only knows what yours does."

It was lame, and Sam knew it. Dean concurred by ignoring the attempt at deflection. "Something I said made you think about something."

Sam inhaled, released his breath on a steady stream. His brother was far from stupid, despite rumors to the contrary among those who'd never witnessed his sharp, clean scalpel of a brain in action. Dean didn't always verbally express himself as clearly as he might otherwise, particularly when he expected his brother to instantly translate the Winchester shorthand, but only a complete fool labeled him laggard in the brain department.

Sam thought back, found it. "Dad."

Dean's brows twitched upward in unalloyed surprise. "Dad?"

"It—" But he ran out of explanation, because he simply didn't have one. "Nothing, Dean. You just said something he used to say. Or, rather, reminded me of something he used to say."

And he saw Dean run it back in his mind, replaying what they'd thrown out at one another without really listening.

"Oh," Dean said after a moment. "Salt without lighter fluid?"

Sam smiled. Nodded.

"Yeah. I remember." Dean rose, pushing his chair back. "Pie and whiskey?"

"Pie and whiskey," Sam agreed.

* * *

Sam smiled as Dean vivisected dessert. One thing about being hunters: knife skills came in handy. A few flicks of his wrist, and Dean had the pie neatly quartered. Then he slid the blade beneath the crust, steadied it with a blunt-tipped finger, transferred the chunk onto a small plate. He shoved it toward Sam, went back for his own serving.

Sam took up the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, poured some onto the pie slice, then into his tumbler. He filled Dean's as well, slid the bottle across so his brother could drench his slice of pie.

"I remember Dad not letting me share your serving, or his," Sam mentioned. "He always insisted on giving me an _unadulterated_ piece of the pie."

"You were too young to drink in those days." Dean poured whiskey over his pie slice, scooped up and shoveled a forkful of pastry and alcohol into his mouth. "Breakfast of champions."

Sam smiled. "I remember when I cleared the table I'd scrape off the last bits of crust and filling you and Dad left, just for a taste of the 'secret sauce.' So I'd feel like a grown-up."

Dean drank whiskey, eyed him over the top of the tumbler before finishing off the contents. "Well, that might explain the off-key singing you did on Dutch Apple Pie Night. You know, when you washed the dishes." He poured more Blue. "And here I thought you were getting off on fumes from the dish detergent. The truth comes out."

Sam gazed at his brother. "You know—I was nine. The first time."

"Nine?—and no, it wasn't sex. I know that for sure. Last year, wasn't it?"

Sam ignored that. "Dad gave me the .45 for the thing in the closet, and the next night I snuck a few sips of the whiskey. Thought I was a man."

Dean snickered, drank. "Not one yet, far as I can tell." His eyes glinted. "You didn't sneak it past anyone but Dad. I knew what was going on when you crawled into bed with me and begged me to tell you the story of Mickey Mouse delivering the Christmas mail."

Sam was astonished. "I _what?_ "

"Crawled into bed with me and—"

He interrupted with no little emphasis. "Not at _nine_ , Dean! I had my own bed!"

Dean's brows twitched. "Didn't mean you stayed in it." He shrugged. "You got scared a few times, that's all. You don't remember? Dad'd be gone a few nights, and if we watched a scary movie you usually ended up crawling in bed with me. Woke me up. But that one night—I guess Dad and I both left too much whiskey-soaked pie remains—you were a whiny little bitch."

Sam went digging for relevance and shook his head, frowning in perplexed memory. "I got nothin.' Seriously?"

Dean flashed a palm. "Hand to God, Sammy."

" _Did_ you tell me the story of Mickey Mouse delivering the Christmas mail?"

Creases beside Dean's eyes deepened as he smiled. "I had no clue what you were yammering on about. So I made something up. Later on I found out it was some kid's book you'd checked out from the library. Let's just say my version didn't exactly match the actual book."

Sam intentionally overdid his shocked expression. "No? You mean, Santa flew a '67 Impala loaded with guns, blades, and ammo instead of toys?"

"With black dogs for reindeer," Dean affirmed.

"No, Dad would have _shot_ those," Sam pointed out. "But Rudolf did have a red nose that glowed without benefit of electricity, so maybe they were supernatural reindeer."

Dean shrugged. "Ah, hell, I don't remember what I told you. But it shut you up, and that's what I was after. Because _I_ snuck an extra splash of whiskey over my pie when Dad wasn't looking, and I wanted to sleep."

"You were thirteen," Sam said. "Was he _really_ letting you pour booze over your pie?" He flashed a smile. "Then again, maybe so . . . God knows you looked so young at 23, when I left for school, you were still getting carded. Easier to get it at home, I guess. You know—on Dutch Apple Pie Night."

But Dean's expression had gone distant, detached. Sam could always tell when his brother checked out, losing himself in memory. For all Dean teased Sam about his puppy dog eyes, Dean's eyes—their mother's, Dad had said one night as his eldest lay on a motel bed semi-conscious in the aftermath of a hunt gone bad—were every bit as expressive, if not more so. If one knew how to read them, one knew exactly what drove Dean Winchester.

"Yeah." Dean poured more whiskey. "At thirteen he _did_ let me add booze to my pie. Not much—a tablespoon, maybe?—but yeah. Said I'd earned it six months before." He caught Sam's eyes and held them unwaveringly. "You know—when I killed that werewolf."

And there it was. A challenge thrown down. Dean was giving Sam an opening to bad-mouth John Winchester as a terrible father.

 _Because it's what he expects. It's what I always did_.

Sam didn't look away. He drank whiskey, still meeting his brother's eyes, then set down the tumbler.

 _I know better, now. I've grown up._

"He did it for her," he said quietly. "For Mom. All of it. And after Jess . . . yeah, I got it. It just took me a long time to figure out how _much_ I got it. Because . . . because now and then, if you're lucky enough, you meet a woman worth risking your life for. Or to _want_ to risk your life for."

Dean flinched. It was slight, but he _flinched_.

And Sam realized that perhaps he'd scored a hit he never intended, that Dean had somehow misinterpreted his words as criticism. Because Sam had loved and lost, and it was the loving and the losing that set him onto a path he still walked. Dean's path was littered with women, but not a Mary Winchester. Not a Jessica Moore.

Dean swallowed hard. He did not meet Sam's eyes. He poured whiskey, drank half down, then stared into the distances. Light glinted off his eyes, off the moisture in them.

"Delphine," he said, in a voice grittier than normal. A tone Sam didn't know.

Sam groped for comprehension. Found nothing. He did not know the name.

And then he did. "Delphine Seydoux? The French Woman of Letters who took out the German destroyer with the Hand of God?"

Dean met his eyes briefly, then stared hard at the tumbler clenched in his hand.

After a speechless moment, Sam denied it. "But, Dean—you were only there for a matter of hours!"

The look in Dean's eyes was brittle. "That's all it took."

Sam was astounded. "You didn't—oh Dean, not in the middle of a war! A case! You _seduced_ her?"

All of Dean's walls collapsed, and Sam saw the truth. "No, I didn't seduce her. I was going to kill her."

"Dean, _wait._ That's not what I meant _—_ " And yet it had been. Because he'd defaulted to . . . well, to his brother's default. When he knew more than any that Dean relied on superficiality because to go deeper hurt too much.

Dean still wouldn't meet his eyes. "She told me it was the only way. I said no, I could just cut the sigil in her skin, but she was blood-linked to the Hand of God." He drew in a breath, released it unevenly. "Swear to God, Sammy, if you'd been there, if you'd seen her, you'd understand. I can't—I can't find the words." His expression was scoured down to raw underlayment. "But it was beauty, and it was bravery . . . and it was _dedication,_ it was _certainty,_ and it was an unfailing belief that what she was doing counted. That it _had_ to be done. Because if it wasn't done . . ." Dean's face spasmed. ". . . if she turned away from it, if she made it about herself and her sacrifice instead of about the _job_ , the world as she knew it would end. And she couldn't bear it. I don't think it ever even crossed her mind." Dean rubbed a rigid hand across his brow, expression harrowed. "Christ, Sammy—I've never hated what we do so much as I did then, when she sacrificed herself. Because she could have had more. She _should_ have had more. A husband, couple of kids . . . I don't know. Whatever she wanted, I guess. But she made another choice. She took another road." He twitched a shoulder in a half-shrug, then threw back the remains of his whiskey. "And maybe she won the war."

Then, abruptly, with a scrape of wood against tile, Dean was up, shoving the chair from the table as he turned and walked away.

Sam, struck mute, said nothing. He just let his brother go.

Thinking: _You just described yourself._

But Dean would never see it that way. He couldn't.

Sam saw it always.

 _'A story for another day,'_ Dean had said.

And now it was told.

 _Why does it always have to be so hard?_

Sam closed his eyes.

For his brother, he grieved.

* * *

 **~ end ~**

* * *

 _A/N: I found "The Vessel" a very poignant episode. A beautiful woman willing to die for her devotion to a cause, to do the right thing, just as Sam and Dean are. When people make those decisions, they aren't thinking of heroics, but of what needs to be done. And that's what makes them heroes. In this case, I felt Delphine was the kind of woman who would attract Dean on a far more visceral level than sex,_ _that she was the kind of woman he truly could have loved. And yet in the past, there was no future._


End file.
